Subject:Need help identifying a video and song.

Written By:Garibaldion04/21/14 at 6:26 pm

Looking through the topics available, I did not want to necro anything, so here goes. I have had this partial song and video going through my head for YEARS. All I can remember about it is it has a kind of Japanese theme to it, with a couple of geisha with fans. The only word(s) I can remember are "desire" and there was a bit where it was spelled out. There was a bit with a set of chattering teeth during the part where the women are singing "nananananana". God, I feel so stupid for even trying to describe it. I have tried and tried searching for it with this little bit of information. I think I first saw it on the HBO Video Jukebox, before it became a regular program, and my brain insists it was Chaz Jankel, but a search has nothing by him with anything near that criteria. It was in late 79 to early 1981, as this was before my dad and I moved out of the house during a divorce, so the timeframe is set.

PLEE-AYZE......Halp!

Subject:Re: Need help identifying a video and song.

Written By:Foo Baron04/23/14 at 8:37 pm

Looking through the topics available, I did not want to necro anything, so here goes. I have had this partial song and video going through my head for YEARS. All I can remember about it is it has a kind of Japanese theme to it, with a couple of geisha with fans. The only word(s) I can remember are "desire" and there was a bit where it was spelled out. There was a bit with a set of chattering teeth during the part where the women are singing "nananananana". God, I feel so stupid for even trying to describe it. I have tried and tried searching for it with this little bit of information. I think I first saw it on the HBO Video Jukebox, before it became a regular program, and my brain insists it was Chaz Jankel, but a search has nothing by him with anything near that criteria. It was in late 79 to early 1981, as this was before my dad and I moved out of the house during a divorce, so the timeframe is set.

PLEE-AYZE......Halp!

We got your back!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSeRoV3Yyx4

- Jesse Rae, D.E.S.I.R.E., 1979.

From the YouTube uploader's comments July 25 2011: "This is a very odd and sometimes annoying video. I apologize for the lousy tape quality. It's jumping out of sync every few seconds, but I noticed that there wasn't a copy of it anywhere here on YT. It looks like HBO superimposed some red boxes over the underwear-clad women in this video. This copy came from HBO's "Video Jukebox" and probably dates from late 1979 or early 1980."

Jesse Rae was an obscurity from Scotland who's been re-releasing his old stuff lately. Here's the DESIRE 12" Remix, and if we want to get really obscure and Scottish at the same time...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol72hGGC_FA - Jesse Rae, Over the Sea as featured in 1984 on the Max Headroom show.

Subject:Re: Need help identifying a video and song.

Written By:Henkon04/26/14 at 2:09 am

We got your back!

- Jesse Rae, D.E.S.I.R.E., 1979.

I'm surprised this wasn't a hit in the Netherlands. It's just the sort of thing we'd fall for.

Subject:Re: Need help identifying a video and song.

Written By:Foo Baron04/26/14 at 2:32 am

I'm surprised this wasn't a hit in the Netherlands. It's just the sort of thing we'd fall for.

It's crazy, isn't it?

I had never heard of this artist until this thread (and the related one in which OP mentioned that the singer spelled the word "D.E.S.I.R.E." in the other thread, which was enough to get me to the solution.) I kinda liked it, wondered what else the artist had done, and wound up in Max Headroom land.

I'm a Max Headroom fan, but I was more into the short-lived TV series than the MTV/Coke marketing campaign, and I still didn't remember the Over the Sea video. If I ever saw it, I completely forgot it. Watching the video didn't trigger a single memory. And yet I enjoyed the hell out of it. Here we are, 30 years after 1984, digging through the cultural detritus of the 80s and we still haven't found everything.

That's what I love about this place. Hang around long enough and you'll find something new that makes it worth the wait.

Subject:Re: Need help identifying a video and song.

Written By:Garibaldion04/28/14 at 6:32 pm

The dumb thing is, now I have to watch it at least once a day. It's just as cheesy as I remember it. And the brief Video Jukebox music was a pleasant memory. Foo Bar is my hero.

Subject:Re: Need help identifying a video and song.

Written By:Foo Baron04/29/14 at 9:11 pm

The dumb thing is, now I have to watch it at least once a day. It's just as cheesy as I remember it. And the brief Video Jukebox music was a pleasant memory. Foo Bar is my hero.

YAY ME!

We like cheesy around here. Thanks for leading me to it, and glad you're enjoying it.

Subject:Re: Need help identifying a video and song.

Written By:Paulon05/01/14 at 5:17 am

Excellent find! Would have struggled with that...

This is probably about the only thing that earned him a few bawbees - as the author of Odyssey's last big hit in 1982...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s41fhNaJDCE

Subject:Re: Need help identifying a video and song.

Written By:Foo Baron05/01/14 at 9:24 pm

Excellent find! Would have struggled with that...

This is probably about the only thing that earned him a few bawbees - as the author of Odyssey's last big hit in 1982...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s41fhNaJDCE

Which takes us back to Odyssey's NYC roots and their 1977 track Native New Yorker or 1980's Use It Up and Wear It Out, their move to the UK, and from there you can go either to Pat & Mick's 1990 cover of Use it Up and Wear it Out or the completely unrelated Johnny Harris track Odyssey (which most 80s nerds will remember only as the ficticious band "Andromeda", because Harris composed it for the Space Rockers episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in 1980, and the video for that is actually pretty much indistinguishable from a Deadmau5 or Skrillex show, except that they had to use incandescents instead of LEDs.)

Confused? You won't be, after tonight's game of follow the bouncing ball on... inthe00s.